Rick's Recent Activities

Update 2/1/2026

Hardware

I was using an 3rd generation iPad Pro from 2018. It had continued to work fine and I had already discovered that I much prefer the iPad to the MacBook for anything other than really serious work, such as surfing, YouTube, email, Quora. The combination of actual apps instead of web pages and the touch screen (Microsoft is right here) just works better for me.

I had upgrade all the way to iPad OS 26 but at that point the machine was aging out. OS 26 just seemed a little too heavy for it, complex web pages would just suddenly quit, and trying to turn off various effects did not seem to help. After some research I determined this is a memory starvation issue. That iPad Pro only had 4 GB of memory and given the way the iPad manages memory processes suddenly quitting is likely a memory issue.  iPads using pre-M1 chips were not capable of virtual memory and apps could suddenly quit under severe memory stress.

I upgraded to the newest iPad Pro M5 with 16 GB of RAM. No more sudden app quits, and no interface slowdowns. Otherwise the experience is very similar and it can be hard to tell which one I am on.

Sliced Apple Site

I have made most of the changes and updates that I am likely to make to Sliced Apple, other than a slow correction of typos. Favicons, Apple touch icons, Google icons, content and keyword meta-tags...from here it is new content. Getting both Google and Bing to re-index the site to reflect the change in index pages is harder than I thought. Being the little guy ain't always fun.

Update 1/16/2026

Sliced Apple Site

After reviewing the site counter statistics I realized that less then 1 visit to the index page out of 10 moves through to the Site Map, where all the actual content and links are. That means that biologic entities, or more likely bots, are stopping at the home page and deciding that there is nothing to see here. They are of course right, but I like to be judged inadequate after a good look, not a cursory one.*

Therefore I have re-organized the front-facing part of the site to make the prior Site Map the new Home page and index page, and the prior Home page an About Sliced Apple page. Deeper content, well, it stays as it lays.

* I realized I am being judged by bots, but it still hurts.

Update 1/13/2026

Sliced Apple Site

Added a new page for the PowerMac G4 AGP "Gray Lady"

Update 1/12/2026

Sliced Apple Site

So, I was slowly going through the site and I got to the guestbook and starting testing it when I realized...I was not willing to enter my email address into my own guestbook.

Hmmm...

This guestbook seems a little spam-magnety. I guess 2004 was a more innocent time.

So, out of the guestbook go the fields for the email and URL.

Update 1/8/2026

Sliced Apple Site

I am slowly updating all the pages that link directly off the menubar to be dynamic.

I also added an archive area of the older versions of the site, and a (completely worthless) page with the various versions of the menu bar.

Update 1/4/2026

Sliced Apple Site

Well, it turns out people don't like to turn their phones sideways.

When I originally created this as (very much) a hobby site in 2003 the iPhone did not exist. Smaller screens certainly did but very small screens were just not very common and accommodating them was low on the list.

When I reactivated the site and shared it with my friends their reliable comment was 'it doesn't work well on our phones'. When I suggested they turn their phone sideways where the site worked well enough, they looked at me like I had suggested they insert their phone in their anus.

So now to create a new new template. The new template is dynamically resizing and a little screen aware (for the menu bar). I had to do this by hand since the free HTML authoring tools are very limited, and the commercial ones are really expensive. (Yes, I know just using the free tools on the web hosting site is the actual answer, but I am doing this for fun, and that is not fun).

I am going to be slow about updating this to make sure there are not even more critical changes, and then only deploy to some of the front facing pages. Most of this site is legacy and is only up for my enjoyment and for what value it has to the legacy Apple community and those pages are fine....just the way they are...

Clearly I am having to much fun with the site to get back to the hardware...but...soon...

Oh, and here is the link to the new site counter.

*I note that there is a file on the site named iphone.css, so at least in 2007 I was thinking about this.

Update 12/29/2025

Sliced Apple Site

After not having done any coding in 20 years, I decided to re-write the site counter. Now, I do understand that the right way^TM to do all this is to remote host the content and use their very advanced analytics tools, or use Google analytics, to get whatever data I want, or to at least apply local tools to the Apache logs (which I will be doing) but that is NOT fun. So I wrote (updated) my simple Perl GGI counter to track the unique and total visits to the site, and for each page, and to be largely auto-configuring. It also ignores internal requests so we don't run up the counter just working on the site. Took me less time to remember how to actually write a script than I thought, and much more time than I hoped.

The counter is now deployed site-wide. I will post a copy of the script when I have time to add some documentation.

Update 12/23/2025

Sliced Apple Site

In order to allow me to expand the site (but God forbid not update to anything approaching a modern standard) I updated and re-created a standard template, now with all the new editable graphics files available. I am now going through the site and updating it to this template. This may take awhile. I also updated Recent Activities (this page) to be a subsection under Our Blogs, and added a separate landing page for my son's Blog. Needless to say the HTML file names are even more inconsistent.

Now to fix the serveres slow network speed, get dynamic DNS working, and...then...work on the CGI for a working visit counter.

Mac Plus

We got the Mac Plug booting on the BlueSCSI. It turns out the Mac Plus does not supply enough power via its external SCSI bus to power the BlueSCSI. We had already suspected that so we had tried powering the BlueSCSI separately but that had not worked. It turns out that the USB cable we were using was bad AND the plug we were using was also dodgy (too many vacuum cleaners I suspect) and so neither was providing power. After BOTH changing the cable and using a different plug it worked. Mac Plus is alive. Just need to find the loose connection

Update 12/6/2025

Apple IIe and Mac Color Classic

The Apple IIe and Color Classic are still waiting for attention. I got some new (used) keys for the IIe which were…wrong…so, on to a new order.

Mac Plus

My son and I recapped the Mac Plus analog board and…it worked! Nobody was more surprised than us. There were two caps in the kit that we could not confirm precisely matched an existing component so we had two new parts left. Well…the Mac Plus booted to the ? Happy Mac image! We tried the BlueSCSI with Mac OS 7.5.3, that WOULD boot the Color Classic, but no joy. Started to setup the EMU from Big Mess O' Wires but just as we were trying to boot we got popping…smoke…burning smells…drama…Mac Plus continuing to run…pull the plug.

Turns out it was infamous capacitor c38, which appears to be one of the two we didn’t replace. We replaced that with one of our leftover parts and then were able to boot to one of the System Tools disks from the EMU. We can not (yet) boot to the BlueSCSI or the HD20 mode on the EMU.

There is also a loose connection where the video will go out but responds to tapping the machine.

Onward...

PowerMac G4 AGP "Gray Lady"

Given the Gray Lady is running on 20-25 year old hard drives I decided I we needed to get newer drives ASAP. I got a 1TB SSD and a 2TB SATA spinning rust drive, only to find out the motherboard ATA controller can only see an 128GB drive. I had an ATA 133 PCI card, but that wasn’t likely to help as I needed something I could boot from and PCI cards generally need drivers that load after boot so…much research later…I have installed the Intech ATA-Hi Cap driver so I can at least chop the drives into 128 (127.99) GB chunks, boot from the first partition and then at least see, as many many additional drives, the rest of my space…only to actually research my ATA 133 card, find out it is a Sonnet card, supports booting, and can see the full space on the drives…arrgghhh! The really annoying aspect is, I used to know all this. I know I used to know it because IT IS ALL ACTUALLY EXPLAINED ON THIS SITE. I just hadn't gotten that far re-reading it yet.

It has been way too long. I am just not as knowledgeable as I used to be.

I also got it optionally booting into OS X 10.5.8. This is much slower than 10.4 but allows me to boot into a newer system for repair and maintenance purposes. Still need to put the Intech ATA-Hi Cap driver for 10.5 in place.

Anyway, the Gray Lady is now upgraded with shiny new drives. Next we plan to modify a cheap PC AGP Radeon 9200 card, which would involve replacing the ROM chip with a larger one and then flashing the Mac specific firmware, so that we can power the display to it's native resolution, and use Quartz Extreme (shift the window manager and composter to the video hardware and unload the CPU) to substantially increase performance (at least by 2002 standards).

Sliced Apple

I now own (for now) slicedapple.org so I have a domain for this site. My son and I spent several hours trying to get DDNS working, either with DynDNS, or with CloudFlare, but we just haven’t quite figured it out yet. We did manually enter the IP address into CloudFlare so Sliced Apple is working at least for now, but the dynamic part is still a Work-in-Progress™.

It has been way too long. I am just not as knowledgeable as I used to be

I also managed to find or re-create some of the site art (such as the menu bar images) so I can start updating the site.

So progress, but slow.

Update 11/22/2025

Ok, of my legacy computers I have re-discovered the current ones in play are the "Sawtooth" PowerMac G4 AGP, the Mac Plus, the Mac Color Classic, and the Apple IIe.

The PowerMac G4 "The Gray Lady" just booted right up and has been my savior in all this. It is acting as a bridge between Classic OS and OS X and newer Mac OSs, and a bridge between new (APFS) and old (HFS, HFS+) file systems. Thank God for the Gray Lady.

The 2011 iMac works and can still be used to do modern stuff (even if it is a big security hole) and the 2018 Mac Mini is still in active use as my main desktop. Bertha is not showing signs of life yet, but just figuring out the power supply (given the custom little circuit allowing a PC power supply to be used) is going to take time. I found the original PM8500 power supply and my plan is to bench test the board after I get the system disassembled.

The Mac Color classic is booting using a BlueSCSI and runs Mac OS 7.5.3. Getting the monitor to display involved washing off the analog board and both it and the motherboard need to be re-capped. Therefore it is currently in a state of disassembly awaiting that.

The Apple IIe makes the boot chime and booted but then would repeat the last pressed key endlessly. After some reading to learn how the keyboard works I tested all the keys to find out that one is broken is stuck as if pressed which was AH HA! GOT IT. I (violently) removed that key and it worked better, except, the n key would type a j, but only as part of the word "print" (or PRINT) but only as the first word after the prompt. Any other time the key worked normally, including any other time I type "print". Some other keys had similar behavior. Believing the forums I then unseated and re-seated the keyboard controller chip and ROM which...screwed everything up...and now the keyboard behavior is approaching random. So...not working yet.

The Mac Plus gives the boot chime (so main board likely OK) but no video. Analog board looks...well...like it has had prior work, and I am planning to recap it as well.

As the years have passed Update 11/2025

This is the first update in...math...18 years. That...is...a..long...time.

A little explanation.

Much has happened in my life over the past 18 years, including Micalin and I getting divorced. The whole story is sad and sordid, and all happened nearly 18 years ago.

Micalin is doing well, has her personal demons on a short leash, and is learning to code software and has written some iPhone apps. For what is is worth, I am proud of her. We, of course, remain friends.

During the last 18 years I have lived my life, doing my actual job (in no way related to technology or computers), got married again, had more children (up to three), am building my own private sanctuary (sort of a back to the ranch thing) with my father and his friend, and of course I bought more computers.

My son and my friends have re-kindled my interest in all my old legacy Mac hardware, including Bertha who has been doing duty holding down the carpet in a closet. Therefore we have decided to re-launch Sliced Apple (applause?...crickets...) and get some of the old hardware back up. The goal is to re-light Bertha and put her back on web duty, but while she is down I am having my old PowerMac G4 AGP (running OS X 10.4) fill in. In the interim this site is sub-functional and elements such as the Guest Book and Counter are not working. Some of the links may not work, and some of the downloads are likely also MIA.

As I bring the site back up in 2025 I am essentially resurrecting it as it was in the early 2000s. This is a legacy Mac hardware site after all so I am going to be running old hardware running an old OS and software as my web server. Certainly the goal is to get the PM 8500 "Bertha" back such that this entire site (originally dedicated to her) is accurate again.

We will also be updating this page to add a blog for my son, and with anything we learn as we get the Apple IIe, Mac Plus, Color Classic, and PM 8500 back up and running.

Ok, I get it. My reader wants to know what I have been doing from a Macintosh standpoint for the past 18 years. Well, the My Apples page gives the details. However to summarize: 2011 iMac, Hackintosh (which is really on brand), 2018 Mac Mini, Mac Book Pro M3 Pro, and just a ton of iPad and iPhones, which are really just Mac OS in another form.

Update 7/2/07

I HAVE AN iPHONE!!! I managed to snag an iPhone (with some help) by 6:30 on 6/29/07 and had it activated by 7:30 that evening. I love it. It really is an amazing device. The web really is "the real internet" and I can surf very much like I can on my laptop (of course the laptop is still far superior). Email also works great, as do all the well publicized features such as the iPod, video, etc. Google maps is really well done and the feature where you can follow directions (with lots of great animations) is superb. Having GPS would really complete this feature.

The phone works very well. The controls for holding calls, switching calls, choosing the iPhone vs a handset, etc. are all very clear, and much better than any prior phone I have owned.

I am all-in-all very happy with it. However here are my gripes and list of features I miss.

The lack of a dedicated start/stop button my music and podcast playback is a nuisance. I tend to listen to podcasts in the car and frequently pause the playback, as well as back up a few seconds. Because of it's nature you have to wake up the phone, and then locate the virtual buttons (also there seems to be a bug where sometimes there can be a multi-second pause before the buttons even accept input.

Bluetooth integration with the computer (address book, OBEX file transfer, tethering).

Voice dialing (really important for Bluetooth handsets).

Ability to browse recent and missed call lists while on the phone (maybe you can but I haven't figure it out yet).

Copy and Paste.

Custom ring tones.

Ability to take videos.

More later...

Update 3/18/07

The NMS Utility has been recompiled as a Universal Binary. It is now v2.4 although except for being Universal it is unchanged from v2.3 beta 3. You can download it here.

Update 3/11/07

I have entered the world of Mactels. As part of my new job I am the proud owner of a new MacBook Pro 2.16 Ghz Core 2 Duo 15.4 inch with the glossy screen. It is a wonderful machine and so far I have had almost no problems. I used the migration assistant to move from my PowerBook G4 12 inch and the move has been so seamless sometimes I forget that I have only been using this machine for a month. The only problems were related to some system extensions (preference panes) that came over with the migration assistant that were not compatible with the MacTels. They caused some slow downs until I removed them. Otherwise everything, including printers and scanners has worked fine. I really have no impression of moving from one architecture to another. Rosetta (Power PC) applications work well and are indistinguishable from native applications except for speed. They do launch much slower than the intel applications and probably launch a little slower than they did on my G4 PowerBook (1.3 Ghz DVI). The applications run about the same speed they did on the G4 but their speed was OK before so I don't have any problem with it now. I am looking forward to Intel-native versions.

The ability to run Windows applications (using Parallels) is actually very nice and works well. It makes it easy to do web-site development on the Mac and test the site with IE for Windows. I also needed a cheap Flash authoring tool and the only ones I could find for OS X were the big-gun expensive ones. I finally just bought a cheap Windows tool that I can use it with no problems. It is fast, and using Parallels "coherence" feature (where I can run the Windows applications in their own windows just like any other application) I am able to develop Flash content while switching over to view it in a Safari and Firefox for OS X just as if I was developing on and OS X application.

Oh, and about the glossy screen. I have read all the religious rants. IMHO glossy looks much better and that makes it easier on the eyes to use for long periods of time. It also seems easier to use in bright sunlight than matte which tends to wash out. YMMV.

Of course I have been able to test (and use) NMS extensively. It works just fine on the Mactels. Soon I am going to recompile it as a Universal. But until then it still uses trivial processing power.

Update 1/30/07

Bertha (the PM8500) is running well. She likes winter. Winter is cold. Cold is good. I have also been involved with a new IT startup doing a variety of odd jobs including some web site design. As a result I have had to increase my knowledge of HTML and related technologies and to that end I have acquired Dreamweaver 8 (Yay!). All this has compelled me to finally begin updating the Sliced Apple site to use technology developed in this century. I am created a new logo and top navigation bar, and am going to shift towards the use of CSS for formatting and layout. This transition is going to be slow as this site is so large and at first CSS will be limited to layout of major elements, and formatting of new content. You can see the new look on the Site Map page. Other pages will slowly follow.

Update 12/26/06

I have FINALLY gotten around to posting a page on joining Sliced Apple's SETI@home team. For more information go here.

And of course...MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!! and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!

Update 11/21/06

The first update in a long time. NMS still seems to be working fine more most people and I have been so busy getting the rest of my life back together I haven't touched Bertha or NMS is months and months. Bertha is still doing fine except that she needs some de-dusting, especially of the heat sinks. She is a little heat sensitive and hot summer days (fortunately behind us) she can crash, although she almost always restarts.

No spec changes for her.

My latest computer related activity involved my Powerbook 12 inch DVI. The power cord got pulled one to many times (oh my kingdom for MagSafe) with sparks and wastage of the power input board. It was a real nuisance to replace since you have to REMOVE THE MOTHERBOARD to replace the input board, but I have my laptop back so I guess the cursing was worth it.

Update 3/11/06

I have had more of a chance to play with some of the Mactels including one of the new Mac minis. I, of course, took the chance to run some benchmarks using Xbench 1.2 and look at some of the software with some interesting findings. What I found was that Xbench 1.2 results seem almost completely invalid. Many of the benchmarks were no better than those seen on my PowerBook G4 running at 1.3 GHz but the Mactels were clearly MUCH MUCH faster.

I also played with Photo Booth. It was fluid and instantaneous on the Mactels but on my PowerBook (don't ask how I got it there) it was so slow it almost seemed paused. I don't know if this if a result of actual differences in hardware performance, a difference in built-in vs external iSight, very poor PPC optimization, better Core Image performance on the newer graphics chips, or all of the above. 

Also, Bertha is now back to 100% with new fans, clean heat sink fins, and a cleaned up OS install and drives, and I have posted NMS v2.3 beta 3.

Update 3/3/06

Leave good enough alone...you would think I would learn than by now.  Arrgg!!

Bertha (my hobby legacy system) had been running just fine with 10.4.2 such that I had been reluctant to update to any newer version since with an unsupported system such as this their is always a risk. However I had never had a problem with a simple non-major update (a point update) and I finally talked myself into running the 10.4.5 Combo updater.

Unfortunately Bertha had a kernel panic mid-update which lunched the system. This was a real nuisance since to repair the drive I had to access it with a system running 10.4 and, being a SCSI drive, Bertha was basically the only working system I had that can see a SCSI drive (I have two other's but they are being worked on right now), and Bertha was now NOT working.

I finally got the drive mounted and the system repaired, but it took a couple of days. I also tracked the kernel panic to overheating of the CPU daughtercard. It has been in use now for a couple of years and its heat sync had filled up with dust bunnies preventing the CPU fan from cooling it adequately (also of the three other fans in the system two had died over time and need to be replaced).

All is back to normal now, but Bertha is due for a good cleaning and maintenance.

I have also posted NMS v2.3 beta 2 (now links to beta 3).

Update 2/14/06

I had been wondering how Apple's transition to the new Intel based systems including the use of Intel designed and manufactured motherboards would effect the NMS Utility.

In order to know when to sleep NMS has to capture the idle timer values from the HID hardware. It does this by reading some general hardware information that includes the idle timer's value as part of it and then utilize some basic Unix commands to search out the specific value I need, and I was afraid that such a major change as a new motherboard might altered the output significantly and break NMS. Actually I expected it to.

Today I had a chance to do a little playing on a 2 GHz Intel Core Duo iMac today and, of course, I took the opportunity to test some of NMS's code by running some snippets from the Terminal and from Apple's Script Editor, and also installing and running the NMS Utility (v2.3 beta 1). To my surprise everything worked great. In fact I could find NOTHING to tell me I was not working on a typical Power PC based Mac.

I also did some of NMS's built-in (although very limited) benchmarking. NMS is running as a cocoa application (Power PC) that is running Apple Script, but it is also running a large number of Unix BSD commands so I wasn't sure how the balance of emulated and Intel native code would play out (I was assuming that the BSD commands were native).

The results were interesting. On the little first-install benchmark that NMS does the Intel iMac scored a 2 (my 1.33 GHz Power Book G4 gets a 4) but the raw number was a 1 meaning it could have been anywhere from 0.5 to 1.49 (the benchmark was designed to catch really slow machines so NMS could poll less often and thus allows fast machines to bunch at the bottom). Running the CPU Utilization test from the Script Additions showed a performance almost identical to the 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4.

This suggest (to me at least) that much of the BSD layer must be either UN-optimized or running in Rosetta (if BSD even uses Rosetta at all).

Still, all in all though I can say that the new machines are still Macs, and that made me VERY happy.

Update 2/5/06

I have been taking a break from computer activities. There have been just too many other distractions in my life. However considering that I finished the first beta of NMS 2.3 in mid October I decided I might take a day finish it up and post it.

Therefore NMS v2.3 beta 1 is now available3.

Update 8/7/05

Finally, I think I have NMS where I want it with v2.1 beta 6.  It seems to work well in Panther and Tiger, is reliable (not magic), easy to use even for those who don't even know it is there, and has some provision to prevent sleep when needed.

I posted it to version tracker and the download is available on Sliced Apple and the Sliced Apple mirror.  Get NMSv2.1 beta 6.  I also wrote a little flash card program (pure simple AppleScript) for teaching multiplication tables. It is NOT MUCH but it is here.


Update 7/28/05

Do to a little corporate...eh...mix up (at the top) some changes are taking place.  Most notably Micalin's Launcher is getting renamed to the inglorious title....SASpop.

Yea, I can do better...later.

Update 7/22/05

I have finished at least a late beta of NMS v2.0 and, wow, some of the things I decided to do (or had to do) that I thought would be cake just arent. It is not trivial to get the system idle time and it is damned hard to find out if your program is running from a switched in or switched out user.  I think I figured it all out.  So check out the new NMS v2.0 on the  NMS Utility page.

Update 7/16/05

A couple of weeks ago I spent some time relaxing (if you can believe that) and looked a bit of Perl for writing CGI's. For practice I added a couple to the site. They are simple but I am just tinkering.  An example of one I added is on the About this Site page where I have a table near the bottom with dynamically updated server technical specs. I also expanded the counters a bit.

More recently I FINALLY decided to take a look at NMS and update it for Tiger. The changes proved trivial so I also got a start on a large update intended to be v2.0 but is a interim status as v1.5.  Check them out on the new NMS Utility home Page.

Lastly some Bluetooth news (some not new news) and tidbits

Update 6/24/05

Seems like a good time to relax and update the site just a bit.

I have made just a few small changes including adding a little extra content (mainly technical blurbs) on using legacy hardware. I also expanded my visual counters to register a much larger percentage of the actual site (before it was only counting three or four pages) and added the counter to the Nvu template for new pages. As an extra I put a few page specific counters on select pages.

Another small victory is that I finally got around to fixing the Darwin Streaming Server that had failed with the Tiger upgrade and refused to reinstall stating a newer version was already installed. I fixed it by doing this, although I had also manually removed all traces of the existing install and manually edited the hostconfig file.

Seems to work well so far. I anyone needs to already modified installer just let me know.

Update 6/10/05

After some XPF forums exchanges I am getting exciting about introducing the Beige to Tiger.  I suspect it will be a very good meeting.

Update 6/09/05

I thought I might weigh in on the BOMBSHELL dropped on Macintosh users this last Monday at the WWDC: Apple is switching to Intel.

(Please excuse the even worse spelling and increased typos. I did this update remotely using a CLI text editor via SSH sitting at a virus infested PC.  I have also added a dedicated page for this topic.)

Like many true Macintosh loyalists I had an affinity for the PowerPC CPU and like most I thought such a switch to be beyond the relm of consideration, although by the time of the official announcement I had accepted it. Also like many of my brethren I had many a discussion in which I extolled the virtues of the PowerPC chip over the dusty and antiquated x86 chips. I still believe in that difference. Neither facts nor reasoning and thus conclusions change just because Apple did. I also know that development effort counts. Intel put huge amounts of resources and talent into progressing their desktop and laptop CPUs and, whether superior in concept or not, Motorola and Big Blue didn't.

Here is my reaction, my take, and my predictions starting with how I view to news, how I feel about it, and why:

My reaction is framed by this grounding viewpoint: I do not, and never did, confuse what a Macintosh is or why I love them with its particular internal components. A Macintosh is defined by the elegance of its Operating System and its software including such things as much better integration of hardware and OS, better (or real) plug and play, sane control panels, the ability to change configurations without restarting, and a host of other details. Details are what define the Macintosh. Apple also has a knack for good hardware design in the touch, feel, and use since, something not impacted by the CPU (heat and power issues aside). A Macintosh was not defined by having SCSI and the change to ATA did not make Macs less Mac-like, nor are they defined by a particular choice of CPU. A Mac running with an Intel CPU will behave no different than one running an PowerPC CPU. In this site (which has not been cleansed of any Intel bashing) you will find little or nothing extolling PowerPC over x86 and given I clearly have an interest in hardware that lack of commentary reflects the level of importance I gave that difference. It was clear that x86 had made such progress that PowerPC was only showing advantages in the higher end systems such that defending Macs as having better CPUs (the 64bit thing was good however) was unnecessary (the OS made them better) and dishonest. I definitely thought this change of CPU architectures unlikely (like George bush coming out of the closet unlikely) because of the burden it would place on a Developer community just now beginning to enjoy the fruits of a successful OS X migration. I am sure this decision was not made lightly and Apple would not have made it unless it was absolutely required for the future of the Macintosh.

My attraction to PowerPC was pragmatic. The RISK architecture has served us well providing chips that produced less heat and required less power than the x86 competition. The result was PC laptops running heavily hobbled CPU versions where Mac users essentially got to use the same chips as our desktops making our laptops much better desktop replacements. In the current day it appears that advantage is gone (at least in the general purpose CPU), even in desktops where the G5 Mac is now requiring water cooling to cool its CPU. All signs suggest that in the future Intel chips clearly do a better job than PowerPC of providing increasing CPU power at with every decreasing heat and power.

Intel has used the resources and done the work. It's chips appear to be MUCH better positioned to advance in the low power/low heat versions where all PC makers are headed. Apple's decisions confirms this. Intel did the work and has the better technology. Way to go Intel. The CPU doesn't define the Macintosh, and a Macintosh deserves the best, and so do its users. This is not a criticism of IBM. The POWER line is amazing, but IBM is targeting high-end servers and embedded systems, not desktop CPUs where Apple was its only real customer. I cannot blame them for putting resources into holding what they have and expanding where they are strong. I also thank them for the G5, clearly a partially custom chip made just for Apple.

Now for the meat: My comments, opinions, and predictions.

Add this up and I am optimistic, even excited about where we are going.

* If I were considering a new Apple laptop now I would not wait. It will not be obsoleted any faster than you already believed it would since we all thought G5 laptop chips were coming. If I were looking at a laptop 6 months or more down the road I might wait (although if you need it I think there is still not a down side to getting a laptop even just before the change over). The Pentium M based models Apple will likely ship shortly after that will likely represent a real power boost and probably have better battery life, and maybe a new form factor as well.


A comment about Bertha (this server) is obligatory (of course).

She is having no problems with 10.4.x and is purring like a kitten with all Unix/Mac services working and the normal GUI for regular desktop use doing well. The only issues were the overwriting of the httpd.conf file (required by the zero conf branding change and easily fixed) and an ongoing issue with Darwin Streaming Server (the open source QuickTime Streaming Server) not working. I have not looked into the problem much yet but the possibilities are that QTTS requires an update for 10.4 (not available if needed), or no update is required but something about upgrading to 10.4 broke QTTS as installed on 10.3. My very brief look into this suggest that the existing QTSS release should work. Attempting to re-install the current build of Darwin Streaming Server fails complaining a newer version is already present. (It does however install on my 10.4.1 running PowerBook but does not work...this is not that helpful since the PowerBooks as an archive and reinstall of 10.4 and had the streaming server installed before such that some files where not present, but some config files still were) but it is not clear how to uninstall it (this is all Unix command line stuff so no Apple ease of use rules apply). My best theory is 10.4 use of (and/or syntax for) the hostconf.conf file has changed (but the old entries are still in place) and the server and/or webadmin tools are just not starting. I hope to have a little time to look more closely at this soon.

Update 5/28/05

Upgrading to 10.4 Tiger replaces your httpd.conf file with a generic one.  If you have made custom changes to your webserver, such as CGI's, virtual hosts, or webDAV, among others, then this will deactivate those services.

If you are just webserving via a simple click of the webserving check box, or if you don't know what an httpd.conf is, don't worry about it.  For you others be sure and back up your existing httpd.conf file before the upgrade.  After the upgrade you can replace the new file with the older one.

If you had webDAV enabled the old file will not work unless you change every instance of rendezvous_apple to bonjour (the new name for zero conf.  

For example the line reading:

LoadModule rendezvous_apple_module libexec/httpd/mod_rendezvous_apple.so

needs to read

LoadModule bonjour_module libexec/httpd/mod_bonour.so

I have CGI's with SSI's and the bitxhack, vitual hosting, proxy serving, bonjour noted websites, and webDAV enabled on Bertha and after that one change (in each place) it all worked.  The httpd.conf file is located at /etc/httpd/.

So far no other problems.  AFP access is much more stable from a 10.3 machine and 10.4 seems faster on Bertha than 10.3, actually a lot faster.  Activating PCI QE helped a bunch.

Update 5/27/05

Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 (updated to 10.4.1) works on the PM8500 "Bertha".

I was a bit apprehensive about upgrading to 10.4 since 10.3 worked so well and "Bertha" continued to give me less trouble than my new systems, and now had had a lot of duties. However Bertha is the index project and no bad reports had really surfaced about 10.4 on legacy machines so time to give it a try try.

Since Bertha was running 10.3.8 this was an upgrade install, not a clean install.  This means this system has been upgraded from an original 10.2 install all the way to 10.4.1.  This upgrade was amazingly smooth essentially being XPostFacto textbook.  The short play-by-play is: I inserted the Mac OS X Install DVD, launched XPostFacto, told it to install from the install CD, restarted from the DVD, and proceeded through a normal 10.4 update.

One very nice suprise was support from the Install DVD of my MS Bluetooth mouse.  After I had started the restart-from-DVD sequence I remembered I was using a Bluetooth mouse.  I assumed the Install DVD would not recognize it since it never did before and went about scrounging up a standard USB mouse.  Low and behold a screen came up with a picture of an Apple Bluetooth mouse indicating a had dead batteries and to replace them.  I dismissed it by hitting the 2 key and kazam, the MS Bluetooth mouse worked fine allowing me to install using it.  Nice touch Apple.

Since details is important for such activities (on legacy hardware) this is what I actually did, much of if setup for upgrading quick while avoiding problems.



So far sooth sailing.  Everything seems to work but I did not test much.  The webserver worked and that was the critical thing. AFP worked as well. Testing continues...

I am pretty sure Tiger will be the last system upgrade for the PM8500.  It has a number of technologies that look to newer Video cards and I have always planned to stop when an update suddenly got much heavier and Bertha got much slower.  That said, I did not expect each major system upgrade to run faster than the prior one, even on older hardware.

Now with Bertha being current until 10.5 (assuming 10.5 doesn't continue the trend) I have at least another year or two (probably two) of nice life left in her.  Even after that she can operate as a dedicated server for awhile.  Not bad....

Update 5/22/05

I have added a page with a Discussion/Rant About How and Why PCI Quartz Extreme Can and Often Does Help Performance on Legacy Systems.

Update 5/20/05


I also subdivided Hardware Modifications into its own section on the Site Map.

As a side note:  My page on making a soft-power signal inverter may have new life.  I just noted that the X Box (not the new X Box 360, I don't know about it) sends a PS +5v to activate its PS instead of grounding it like normal ATX boards do.  That means people doing X Box mods who are do-it-yourself types need a power inverter as well (I also understand there is a possible oddity with the sense leads as well.)  Perhaps this information will help them as well.

MS using Mac-style solf power specifications on the first X Box, and now a Power PC chips to power the new X Box and an Apple system as the developement environment . . . sounds like MS may be coming around after all!

Update 5/13/05

The exiting news is Mac OS 10.4 Tiger.  I did not realize how BIG an update Tiger really was until I read this 10.4 technical review on Ars Technica (although I had heard rumors).  It is a very interesting article.

I far as recent changes.  I updated Micalin's Launcher to version 2.0 beta now at beta 2.  Micalin's Launcher is pure learning for me as I figure out how to do things using AppleScript Studio.  Version 2.0 is MUCH better than the prior version 1.1.2 since I am getting better at managing the interface.  Also I have really expanded its capabilities.  It is mostly Tiger savvy now.

My other release KDE Launcher is also Tiger savvy (changed one line of code) but unfortunately I cannot get KDE running in 10.4.  I managed (after many hours) to get it to compile but KDE will not finish launching.  It is NOT a KDE Launcher issue since I have been testing it manually.

I have also done the typical minor site mods with a few more substantial changes.  I continued my slow Nvu migration this time updating the PM 8500 Hardware and Software Reports, added some placeholders for missing pages, and added a formal Sliced Apple (NMS) page as the main page for Sliced Apple Software relagating the original software home pages to being children of this root page (philosophically).

I also compiled some of the useful tips on OS X and legacy hardware, along with some additional content, into formal pages about legacy OS X installs, booting help, Mac OS 9 issues, etc...  It's groups under a new section on the site map Articles on Legacy Hardware and Software.  I wanted someone coming to my site to attempt a legacy OS X install for the first time to have help and guidance, if only to be guided to the XPostFacto site.  Such a section just seemed necessary for for the Sliced Apple site given its content and emphasis.


Update 4/22/05

Damn, long time.  I must be getting busier.  Bertha is doing well, continuing to handle web server, webdav serving, print serving, well just serving everything just fine.  No problems.

I have been otherwise occupied with some occasional distractions playing with some of my freeware releases.  I have had new versions of Micalin's Launcher and KDE Launcher ready to go for over a month.  The posted release of Micalin's Launcher REALLY needs to be updated since it is buggy as hell and the version I have fixes all of it (while expanding capability). Micalin's Launcher has done what I wanted of it.  It has been a course in AppleScript Studio and GUI design.

However KDE Launcher is getting the love since it messes in murkier waters and finding out how much trouble some inexperienced people could get into for very simple problems (that they are confounded by because I didn't make it clear enough) I decided to attempt to make it VERY resilient and friendly.  I got half way there.   Anyway KDE Launcher 2.0 and now the "Safer" (hopefully) KDE Launcher 2.1 are released.  They are the updates to the original Launch KDE.  Curious, check them out at the KDE Launcher home page.

A beta of Micalin's Launcher will be posted soon.

Of course, the most important thing is TIGER IS COMING!!!!!

Update 2/24/05

Status is "Everything be everything".  Bertha is purring and we are about to bring Beige back up (my wife is picking out a new case).  Our play software company NMS Software now garners all the top spots for a search of Micalin because, well, she is the only Micalin.  I have written a new tiny AppleScript background application to finally fix my laptop sleeping problems for good.  Invariably any Apple laptop I use the power manager or some setting gets corrupted preventing automatic sleep when on battery which is soooo irritating.  NMS is a little app that forces the laptop to sleep within three minutes of the screen saver activating (if sleep is not set to never).  Works great.  SHE SLEEPS AGAIN!!!  It's in the downloads folder.

Update 2/15/05

No big news on the BIG LADY.  She continues to serve without a hitch since the wiring problem in the power inverter was addressed. 

I have spent most of my hobby time updating a venerable AppleScript I have been using for the last two years, Applications Launcher.  This is my oldest AppleScript so it is near and dear to my hear.   This is a little AppleScript I wrote when I first met Micalin to try and bridge her off of windows machines by giving her something of a Start Menu, and to introduce her to programing topics.  I has also been meaning to write something to handle updating my Application launcher folder, in the Apple menu in OS 9 and earlier, in the Dock in OS X, and this seemed like a good excuse.

It has gone through a variety of names a such as...wait for it...Auto App Alias (no kidding), Micalin, Applications Launcher (held that for most of its life) and now, as a continuation of my fictitious software company, Micalin's Launcher.  I finally decided to update it to AppleScript Studio so I could actually give it some options and solve some nuisance issues.  With that update I decided that it was safe for public release as it was likely to be possibly useful for someone who just wanted a dang no hassle updated folder of applications in their darned dock without having to run haxies, Dock replacements, or anything else.

So I went ahead and put in on Version Tracker Feb 15 for anyone to enjoy and/or delete.  With some version tracker prompting I went ahead and setup a quickly web page for it.  You can see that, and, if you like, download this beast from the Micalin's Launcher page.

Have fun.

Update 1/14/05

Life continues to be slow so I have had a little more time to devote to things digital.  I think a simple list of what new has been done is what I am in the mood for today:

1. Brought the Power Center 120 back up, running in OS X 10.3.  Its currently setup as a webserver and just another "for vising buddy use" computer for surfing.
2. Got the PowerBook 3400/200 back up.  It continues to plod along in OS 9.2.2 connected via a 802.11b PCMCIA card.
3. Completely revamped the internal intranet and web site to reflect its current and future state.  All pages were modified for consistency and re-authored in Nvu.  Six main pages were changed if you include the VOD (Video on Demand) page.  For consistency and security the VOD page was relocated  from the public area to private area of the webserver.  Since this entire web project started as nothing more than a small link off the VOD page the VOD page had remained in the same domain as the Sliced Apple page it spawned.  The intranet was created later and was specifically setup as auto-registering on Rendezvous so it would automatically appear in the web browsers of any locally connected Mac clients.  The VOD system was functionally placed on the intranet web site at that time but never physically moved until now.
4. The VOD system was expanded and tuned to provide for more movies and more streaming options.  All DivX movies had their audio tracks trans-coded to AAC (mp4 audio) and the movies were repackaged as hinted QuickTime .mov MPEG 4 files (MPEG 4 movies placed in .mov containers also with extra tracks (hints) containing information to facilitate streaming).  I had found that VLC and mplayer could could not decode the audio track on streamed movies that were orginally DivX (mp4 video and mp3 audio packaged as an .avi) but were repacked and hinted as a .mov, although QuickTime and Real Player had no problems.  Curiously VLC had no problems playing those same files directly.  Trans-coding the movies to standard full MPEG 4 movies (but still packaged as hinted .mov files) improved their streaming characteristics and restored VLC functionality.
   
5. Added two more web sites hosted on our network to the three external and one internal already there (i.e. added two more virtual name hosts to Apache).  These two new sites were for my wife who wants to build and maintain them herself. Therefore Apache was further configured for reverse proxy functionality to allow her server to respond to and serve those sites.  That means now we have two inernal web servers serving five external and one internal site with my server acting as the conduit.
6. Configured and activated a public (but password requiring) webDAV server on the PM8500.  webDAV (or just DAV) is a newer http based web standard allowing webserves to function like mountable network disks.  Since webDAV is http based it deals much better with network fluctuations and down periods than other protocols, like AFP (Apple Filesharing Protocol), that are designed more for use on a sheltered LAN and tend to have problems maintaining (keeping alive) connections across the rough and roudy internet.  Apple's iDisk is a webDAV based internet disk.
   
7. Directed the webserver to register four web sites on Rendezvous.
   

This now means that, relative to the default configuration, the Apache web server (v1.3) on the PM8500 has been reconfigured for CGI, SSI, multiple virtual hosts, reverse proxy functionality, authentification, and webDAV.

If that aint geek, I'll kiss your ass.

Update 1/6/05

Its a new year, and about damned time!!!

I have spent my time here mainly unpacking.  I have had some time however to completely revamp my Video on Demand system.  The streaming server was originally based on VLC's ability to use a web server as a streaming server.  In that incarnation the Apache web server on the PM8500 was used to stream DivX AVI movies to a VLC (VideoLAN Client) receiving client with the client controlling (Video on Demand) the stream.  It worked fairly well and VLC was able to control the stream with features such as pause, skip to, etc.  It worked on DivX files but seemed to break down on newer mp4 files as the server or network could not keep up.  This was probably related to the relatively old nature of the PM8500 and how close to the edge it was, and still is.

Some more research revealed that the Darwin Streaming Server, the open source sibling of the QuickTime Streaming Server included with Mac OS X Server, is freely available from Apple and easy to use.  Even better it requires little or no setup besides using a double-clickable installer and if setup is desired it includes a really well done web based admin utility that auto-launches for config and setup after the installer finishes....SWEET!!!!!!!!!

Now I have all my movies, along with some new additions, back online and streamable plus now I can stream equally well to QuickTime, VLC, or Real Player, all from a nice HTML based front page I put together using the easy instructions provided with the Darwin Streaming Server help system.

This is a joint project with me and my beautiful wife.

I also should mention.  The move to Nvu (now up to 0.7) is going very slowly, but it is going.  Nvu is quite a learning curve, and, of course, if is really not anywhere near the caliber of the big boys in web authoring, but it does force much cleaner code that renders more consistently across browsers than MS Word did.  The code is much smaller too.  Most importantly, Nvu is getting better with each release.

So far this page, along with my internal LAN home page, and the new VOD page haven been transitioned to Nvu.

Update 12/24/04

I am finally home, back in Texas where I belong.  It appears I survived my bi-coastal adventure, and so did my main server, the PM 8500.  If my, eh, reader has been following my harrowing adventure then he (or she) knows of the troubles my Frankenstein has had during this time.  The most unusual part of it was how unusual any problems were at all.  I had little doubt my server would have an uptime equal the duration of my journey.  Alas it was not meant to be...

A brief recap:  Shortly after my departure in late September my server, the PM 8500 began powering down randomly every few days.  Some quicky investigations showed the UPS and the auto-restart on power loss were functioning correctly and all seemed normal except for a fan that was going bad.  Originally I thought the home-built soft power inverter must be out of adjustment but as the problem worsened, but seemed improved by reducing the power load, I began to suspect the power supply, a 10 year old 171 Watt unit, was going south.  I was not surprised considering how inadequate it should be for such a large and hardware heavy server.  Eventually the crashes became multiple times an hour and I temporarily moved Sliced Apple to my .mac account and shut Bertha (as her friends know her) down until my return.

When I finally got back and retrieved my baby it took about 20 minutes to identify and repair a simple loose connection to the power inverter.  Bertha was then back to normal.  However, eager to rip in I decided to to the 'right thing' and replace the power supply with a more ample model and also redo my custom wiring harness to allow any standard ATX PS to just plug right in.  As it was I had rewired an ATX supply by splicing directly into its wiring harness making a custom harness to connected to the dual motherboard connectors of the old hoss (a 24 pin connector and a 10 pin connector) plus the cobbled together power signal inverter that allowed soft power.  This wiring harness is complex and delicate making replacing the PS arduous as just the base work is about 4 hours and usually some wire get loosened in the spaghetti as wires get tugged and pulled, an event that can take many more hours to track down.

To make matters easier I just removed the old supply and spliced in a standard ATX 20 pin motherboard receptacle that any standard PS can plug into.  The whole process to about 4 hours as I tugged no wires:)

Works great, and since I had long decided to make the server a decidedly un-Mac like style challenged unit I choose a florescent blue supply with a bright green wiring harness.  New pictures are coming soon.

Other technical tidbits about the supply:  Aspire 500 Watt dual 8 cm fan with user adjustable speed...yea, it's just a cheap power supply...

My wife is also thrilled to be back and I am happy to say, she is back in every since of the word.  I feel sorry for those inner demons of hers as they are taking a real a_ _ kickin!!!

She is eager to begin bringing her server, the Beige G3, up to full function again!!!

 

Update 12/12/04

It appears our long journey may be nearing to an end, and sooner than I thought.  Just five more days in the way way West before a prodigal return.  Not a moment too soon as my server desperately needs its power supply replaced, which is not a job for the faint of heart.

On the technical side, it looks like I will be giving Nvu a real chance as my HTML editor of choice.  This page has been moved to Nvu, although given MS Word's HTML, doing so was a nightmare.  Many of the older pages, especially the PM 8500 Project page, will be transitioned slowly, if at all.  Any new pages will be completely generated by Nvu.

The main advantage to this is tighter HTML (smaller files) and better use of HTML tags (like relative font sizing and lists) as opposed to Word's absolute formatting.  I must say that I have no beef with Word.  It is a wonderful program and its decision to error on the side of strictly preserving and reproducing the exact word document in HTML is understandable.  Using conventional tags however allows such improvements as better text resizing, better list formatting, etc.

Lastly, I plan to add some desktop pictures to my site for download.  I got a number of good pictures on my adventure many of which would make good backgrounds.

Update 11/29/04

 

And like magic we are now fruits and nuts enjoying life as California dreamers. Unfortunately my server went down just as we started our 3000 mile odyssey and it was not until today that I finally had the time to get it back up. That made for a two day down time. Interestingly it seems that the wireless hardware was not initializing until the computer was allowed to boot with a connected and powered monitor.

For relaxation I have been occupying myself with solving some outstanding programming questions, but now I am finally going to begin my slow site overhaul. First, as I have mentioned, I am going to change to a real authoring application. It's currently between Nvu or Tag. After that is completed (or maybe consecutively) I am going to shift to use of CSS.

Can this REALLY be what I do for fun!?!

Update 11/19/04

After someone emailed me a question about adding internal Bluetooth to an iBook G4 I thought I might as well get off my ass and figure out obvious details I should have posted before. Therefore today I posted the Pinouts for the USB connectors of both the iBook motherboard and the BT board.

Update 11/18/04

No real updates, just the response to a dare. My beautiful but oh so crazy wife called my bluff on my posting photos of her. Never to slink away from such a challenge (and to explore virtual hosting) I give my readers, or reader, what they most want: To see the person they have heard so much about. Therefore I give you… MY CRAZY WIFE!

Update 11/16/04

No activity to report. Being stuck East I just don’t have too much opportunity. The Sliced Apple site is doing well with a large bump in hits after the iBook upgrade page was referenced from XLR8 Your Mac plus the subsequent Googlebot raids.

 

On the personal front, my wife took her new cat to the vet where we were treated to the surrealistic experience of the vet telling my wife to quit biting the cat.

 

At least life is never dull… now, on to the west coast.

 

Update 11/11/04

 

Most of my recent activity has been completely web site related. However, I am happy to report that the PM 8500 seems to have stabilized. It is near certain as this point to be a power supply issue. Unfortunately, the unique nature of the machine means I will need to modify a new power supply before it can be installed and that requires that I, well, be in the same state as my server, preferably even the same room. Until then reducing the load by disconnecting unnecessary hardware appears to have helped.

While we keep our fingers crossed I have setup an automated AppleScript to monitor the server from my laptop and alert for any interruptions. It also keeps meticulous local logs. So far no down time.

The website work has mainly consisted of minor repair and tuning, especially with the CGI additions. It appears one of the counters has won out, especially seeing as how the other counter is not counting. Soon the loosing counter should go bye-bye. Also, ever curious as to what was going on with my baby I setup Analog to peruse my Web logs, and then promptly modified httpd.conf to have useful logs to peruse. Lastly I also placed some of my simpler AppleScripts on a local download page for the truly masochistic. 

By and large altering the Web Server settings, reading about Apache, and figuring out CGI's has been very interesting.

Now, on to the larger project. Seeing what LOUSY HTML Microsoft Word produces I am going to attempt to move the site over to Nvu (pronounced New View).  Nvu is an open source standalone web authoring tool based on Composer out of Mozilla. As Navigator became Firefox so shall Composer improve as Nvu … we hope.  So far transitioning has been less than smooth.

Update 11/7/04 

This was a few days of serious updates resulting from some down time and stasis while I prepare for the trip to San Diego. I decided to put the time to good advantage and tackle my long vexing problem of understanding this web server better, and more importantly, getting CGI’s working. 

Surprisingly I actually had some success and managed to configure Apache’s ON GODLY HUGE httpd.conf file for CGI’s, and SSI and then installed a couple of counters (to see which one I like) one of which keeps pretty good statistics plus a Guest Book. 

You can see two counters on the Home Page and one counter on the Site Map. The Guest Book is also linked from both pages. 

Update 11/6/04

 
Wow, two days, two updates.

This is a technical update on the Bluetooth modification to the iBook G4. After a couple of weeks of use it was clear that the iBook’s Bluetooth range was short, probably less than five feet. This was OK for mice and keyboards, but a little short for networking or pairing with the cell phone. On my PowerBook there is really just one antenna with two leads, one for airport and one for Bluetooth. This makes sense since they both operate at 2.4 GHz and therefore in reality just share a single antenna. Considering this I spliced the Bluetooth antenna lead end-to-side into the Airport antenna. The result was greatly increased Bluetooth range allowing me to pair with my cell phone placed in an adjacent room with preserved (not shortened) Airport range. 

Update 11/5/04 

No luck. The server is now auto-restarting after power outages but still goes down hourly. This narrows it to a power supply issue. Either that old 170 W PS is finally dying, or my power inverter got knocked out of adjustment by the moves. Personally I think the power supply is just failing. 

Since my plans involve me being physical available to it for a couple of days later this month I will look at it then. Until then I am just going to live with the problem as it would be a stretch to have those hosting it do very much with the hardware. One thing we are going to try is disconnecting the two optical drives since they are not really useful to me 1400 miles away. 

Also, since I am in an odd mood. I am going to post my KDE Launcher on my website. It is just a simple Apple Script I wrote a while back when I was first playing with KDE and Apples X11. Like many people, I assume, I quickly discovered that although Apples X11 window manager, quartz-wm, works great with most X11 apps, it is a dog with KDE. KDE really needs its own window manager but it is nice to have Apple’s wm running in the background to allow copy and paste between OS X and X11. This can be a nuisance since KDE checks for Apple’s X11 and uses it if found. Originally I modified the kde startup shell script (startkde) to kill and then re-launch quartz-wm in proxy mode and changed the x11 startup script (.xinitrc) to pass an environment variable to kde to use its own wm (kwin) along with some other mods. This worked well except it meant you could not run Apple’s X11 for most X11 apps and KDE at the same time (without a lot of command line futzing, and I am a GUI warrior) and was a pain to put on other computers. Updates also overwrote my files regularly. 

My solution was to write an apple script that also runs a shell script that takes care of all that busy work dynamically on whatever computer it is on and runs X11 for KDE as a separate instance of X11 on a different display so that the regular X11 can be run at the same time using Apple’s window manager. The only install modification necessary is to make a copy of the X11.app, rename it KDE.app, and place it in Applications. 

It has worked for a year now, so I guess it will keep going. 

Just for ease I modified it to make a temporary copy of X11 called…wait for it…X11-KDE that it deletes on conclusion so that it is not necessary for the user to modify the X11 app themselves. 

I am sure a real programmer would do much better, but I had fun anyway. 

Anyway, here it is. 

My wife is working on a custom icon based on her ass. No really…it’s based…ahhh…never mind....

Update 11/3/04 

With a little luck the server interruptions are interrupted. Given the symptoms of random power downs despite being connected to a working UPS, being set to power back up with a power failure (confirmed as working) but failing to power back up, and it properly powering back up on a schedule I began to suspect the power supply was overloading and kicking off. This would explain why the computer could not power itself back up since a scrammed power supply takes a while to reset. It was reported to me that a whine was coming from the computer (hard to hear over local whining) thought to be a hard drive. This seemed unlikely sine the main boot drive is a year old Quantum Atlas 10K SCSI drive (an expensive server level drive) and the other two drives, the 160G and the 200G, showed normal S.M.A.R.T checks. Further investigation showed it to be a fan going bad and a new symptom appeared of powering down within seconds of power on. This resolved with normal power up after the fan was disconnected. 

Now we see if it stays up. 

Update 10/27/04 

YEEEHAAA!!! We finally have broadband again. 

This allowed for another addition to the website. Rejoice (or be bored) but the long overdue page on adapting an ATX power supply for use in my old PM 8500 is finally online. 

The iBook’s new Bluetooth is performing well. Its range MAY be slightly less than my PowerBook gets, but I need to recheck since our Bluetooth cell phones can be temper mental and often need to be power cycled after an abrupt GSM/GPRS disconnect before Bluetooth will function again. 

Update 10/25/04 

Finally, some actual hobby activity to write about. 

Considering the plethora of neat parts organ donated by my departed PowerBook G4 12 inch, including a BTO upgraded 60 GB internal HD, a DVD-RW/CD-RW, and an internal Bluetooth module my wife decided that her but a month old iBook G4 was is need of some upgrades, especially the Bluetooth module. She has learned my profound dislike of external dongles on laptops. Not having any idea where the otherwise factory installed Bluetooth module might be located in the iBook we did a bit of web searching where all we saw mentioned (over and over) was that internal Bluetooth could absolutely not be added to an iBook unless installed during assembly at the factory. This of course meant that we had to do it. 

Total time for internal Bluetooth upgrade, about 70 minutes. It was somewhat of a surprise to find that it truly was a factory part in that this iBook did not contain the antenna, or the power lead for the Bluetooth module, requiring us to borrow a few more internals from the PowerBook. While we were there we also decided to replace the existing 30 GB HD with the 60 GB one out of the defunct PowerBook. Most luckily we were able to combine case parts from the existing CDRW/DVD-ROM combo drive and repair the DVD-RW/CD-RW drive and therefore also install it. This gives my wife a unique iBook since it now has internal Bluetooth (not uncommon), a 60 GB HD, and a 4x Superdrive. 

The steps to upgrade a new iBook to internal Bluetooth would be something like this. 

1. Fling new PowerBook against hard surface multiple times to soften it allowing the necessary parts to be extracted easier (this part give some folks pause).Place extracted parts in new iBook.
2. Sweep up shards.

GO TEAM!! 

Details are on Warranty-smarranty: iBook G4 upgrades 

Update 10/18/04 

Gosh darn it, I am now a damned Yankee!! 

Not much has happened on the computer front as basically mandated by a nearly 1400 mile separation. Today is the firs t day of good internet access since landing in the East and therefore the first opportunity for a real update. Before now we have been using our Bluetooth cell phones for internet access for our laptops which is possible because we have unlimited wireless internet (say with reverence). Without this internet activity graces us to the tune of $10+ dollars a Mbyte…OUCH!!! Fortunately I knew the drill and headed off financial ruin by altering our rate plan before the inevitable. 

The Sliced Apple website had been up sporadically, but that is better than never. I have done no maintenance so I assume that is due to local hardware manipulation. Other than that the only changes are many grammar revisions to the prior update. 

Also of interest. I can give some feedback on my new Powerbook 12 inch DVI 1.3 GHz as compared to my original Rev A model. Generally this machine is faster (needless to say) but the other machine was fast as well and I have not done the types of activities, such as trans-coding DVD’s, that really tease out the differences so I can only say that it is very pleasant to use. As far as notable differences so far THIS machine is much more stable, has none of the funny graphics drop outs of the original machine, is MUCH cooler, and has significantly better battery life. Unfortunately the screen is still the lackluster quality of the original with the same pitiful default color sync profiles. True comparative benchmarks are coming. 

Update 10/1/04

There has been a long gap in any real activity on my computer hobby, or on this website. Unfortunately a personal situation has required undo amounts of time, much of it avoidable in my opinion. Largely as a result of this situation and my general annoyance with making a rare mistake of continuing to interact with those who just don’t get it for longer than is customary for me (typical about one five minute conversation) I have hit the road for different and that gives me peace, intelligent conversation, and some time for such pleasantries as correcting irritating and redundant web site errors. Ah normality, a true benefit of BBGSP. Unfortunately one downside is my PM 8500 desktop is gone begging for stable Internet connectivity while I am away and the graces of the powerful can be fickle. This means that all changes to the system or website are now being done totally remotely. This may prove challenging since I personally know no other individual besides myself or my wife who could physically manage the PM 8500 if a complex problem were to result and therefore I don’t know anyone who can be tapped to provide meaningful physical access, troubleshooting, and repair. My wife is with me on this journey. This condition will likely exist for a number of months, possibly up to a year, and should prove an interesting test of the stability of my Frankenstein. 

However prior to ALL HELL YET AGAIN I had really made some major changes and additions to my website, and some changes to my computers as well. These changes mostly occurred in late August and early September. On the hardware side I did some hardening of the PM 8500 to help her survive the upcoming stress including replacing in large part the power leads and wires, securing all internal components to the case or structure including the internal hubs, internal and external wiring, and critical devices such as the iMic. The MS Bluetooth dongle was replaced with an internal Apple OEM Bluetooth module that mounts near the front just below the drives. It has its antenna secured to and runs in the front cover. The floppy was also mounted for external access in a standard bay and reconnected in case it was needed for OS 9 booting. A front bay mounted combination USB 2 and FW powered hub was also installed. Finally the recently reinstalled Ethernet card was removed and a $39 at Wal-Mart 802.11G PCI card installed in its place which is recognized by Panther as an OEM Apple Airport Extreme card curtsey of its Broadcom chipset. Lastly the power, and drive lights were adjusted to make them cooler looking (meaning orangish-red). All told these modifications improved stability dramatically both by allowing the machine to be physically moved without resulting in several days of finicky behavior and by providing easy stable network connectivity via wireless. The wireless connection provided impressive 5MB/sec file transfers, twice as high as I have ever gotten with 100BaseT on this desktop. 

Continuing testing and experience with the Beige G3, especially by my wife, revealed that the defective onboard IDE bus was going to be a continuous problem. Seeing this I finally caved and bought an ATA 133 PCI card (SIIG) and can say without hesitation that I was really stupid not to have done this much earlier. The performance of the machine increased dramatically and all 8G install limits vanished (apparently, unlike my Sonnet ATA card, the SIIG card maintains at all times the illusion of a SCSI bus). And, most surprisingly, drive performance went from 15 M/s to a stunning 50-60 M/s. Unfortunately that machine is currently in storage pending a more stabled situation.

Lastly for hardware my long missing PowerBook G4 12 (in a much upgraded fashion 2nd to Apple’s screw up) finally showed up and she is lovely. It is serving all my local computer needs while ‘on the lam’. For my wife needs we got her a new iBook G4 12 inch with a CDRW, 768 M RAM, and Airport Extreme (the 512 M DDR 266 and the AP Extreme card taken from the defunct Powerbook 12 inch since the new one uses DDR 333, and thus a new DIMM was required, and AP is now standard on all Powerbooks). The iBook is essentially the same machine as my G4, especially with the dual monitor and lid down open firmware hack working, and she loves it. 

The web site saw much more activity. This consisted of a general overall of the entire side for a more consistent appearance with a somewhat complete implementation of a useful navigation bar and improvements to the overall look. This was meshed with an even greater overhall of the private internal site including the addition of a combo internal/external navigation bar and provisions to formally limit external access to the internal site. In addition the content of both sites was expanded with Sliced Apple getting the most. This included major new sections continuing the upgrade saga including sections detailing the re-casing and sound issues, a long technical discussion on building a power inverter to allow this old Mac to use the soft power function of a new PC power supply, a Windows vs Mac discussion from a GUI and Guidelines perspective, a site history, and a list of all the computers I have owned. I also added Photo pages for both the PM 8500 and Beige G4. There was more of course but those were the biggies on the Public side.

Update 8/19/04

Navigation bar expanded and placed at top of most primary pages.

Update 8/18/04

The PM 8500 decided to give some fight. I did not have time to attend to it properly, so it remained down for several days. Actually fixing the problem was challenging but it turned out to be inadequate grounding of the connector housings along the back of the board, and it specifically affected the built-in Ethernet connectors. This created a state of persistently absent video (for several days) and upon its recovery failed boot with an OS 9 freeze from any bootable drive about 1/2 way through (needed to boot to 9 to get to X). I had specifically addressed grounding of the connectors during the audio problems but with heavy use, and continuing modifications, the metal real cover brought over from the original case had slowly warped. All is back to normal now but the question is begged, did the slow motion Ethernet failure of a couple of weeks back really occur, or what it just this grounding issue. It is possible that OS X does not freeze on startup with such and Ethernet problem and only when forced back into OS 9 did I encounter this seemingly new problem.

Update 8/13/04

After some use I decided that the Beige will reliably corrupt OEM bus ATA drives from OS 9 or OS X and after some testing now have it running well from a FireWire drive using a SCSI disk as helper. Otherwise, nothing new.

Update 8/6/04

 

I have had a little time on my hands and so a little has gone to computer activities. Most important is the 8500 as always. It had been moved to a location where it accessed the main network via a router connected to a wireless bridge to another router, something it hated before. Performance went to hell with pauses, freezes, etc… To make a long story short I rechecked everything, changed some drive configs I thought were hockey, and tried all sorts of different cards, positions, etc… trying to keep a dedicated USB card for Mouse/Keyboard and audio as I had fought the USB/PCI bandwidth problems so hard before. Networking (off the built in AAUI port) slowly deteriorated and then failed forcing me to place the Asante 696 10-100 card back in and losing my extra USB 2 card. Magically the networking and performance instantly returned. However to my joy no bandwidth problems came back despite the fact that my mouse and keyboard (via Bluetooth), ATA drives, DVD burner, and sound all come off the same overworked PCI card. I have no mouse pauses and no audio stuttering even under heavy load, which is an improvement even over the two card configuration. FW performance also dramatically improved.

Sometimes we just get lucky since I am not sure what I did.

I also finished placing the busted iBook 500 in a case with a FW drive and it works well. Figuring that, along with the iBook, I needed two more computers for the office I decided to use the Power Center (as previously upgraded) and, after much frustration, my new wife donated her stubborn Beige G3 for office use. I immediately re-cased it in a standard ATX tower and went about figuring it out. I succeeded in getting it setup stable including the addition of a wireless PCI card and it is doing office duty without complaint. I think I got the trick figured out on it. Some details of it are here.

As for my missing soldier, the Aluminum PowerBook G4 12 inch. It went to Apple three times (over this month) and had everything replaced including the motherboard twice and display three times. The Apple technicians admitted defeat and are shipping me a new one. The good news is they mean a NEW one. The specs have changed and the one I am getting is a serious upgrade with a faster CPU, 4x faster DVD burner, and an nVidia card with twice the memory. It also has a 167 MHz bus and DDR 333 memory and the 60 GB HD that was the max upgrade in my smashed PowerBook is now standard. This is a real upgrade over the lemon one I just bought, but when compared to the smashed one it’s a pronounced upgrade. Considering the faster bigger cache, faster bus and memory, faster CPU, and faster bigger graphics chipset I would not be surprised at double the originals performance.

Specs of the to-be-shipped unit (with addition of obligatory 512 MB RAM upgrade):

1.3 GHZ G4 with 512k L2 cache at full speed on 167 Mhz bus, 768 MB DDR 333 RAM, 60 GB HD, 4x DVDr/CDRW, FW, USB2x2, Bluetooth, 802.11G, V.92 Modem, 10/100 Enet, 64 M nVidia 5200 to Go, Dual Monitior Support with DVI/VGA/S-Video/Composite connections

Also of note. I saved the 60 G HD out of the old unit (checks out as no damage) along with the 512 M chip, the internal Bluetooth module (rewired and doing duty in the 8500), plus the 802.11G card (since all new PowerBooks include them). Considering I am on the hook for a G4 iBook for my new wife having both required upgrades (memory, airport) along with “would be nice” (internal bluetoosh), and ‘if I am really nice’ (faster much larger internal HD) I will hopefully save some cash.

Update 7/5/04

News is still sparse. The 8500 server is still functioning in a lesser capacity as some memory has been temporarily handed down to the PowerCenter for a total of 384 MB leaving our hero with only 896 MB. She is also temporarily laying low at my parents house doing minimal duty pretty much acting as the main thing since the PowerBook got Sataned and its scared replacement is undergoing protective indoctrination at the Vatican Cupertino for an unholy motherboard failure. However Web Serving duties appear to be blessedly intact. No new hardware as no time and we have soon to transition to another location prior to coming to rest at casa nirvana. AFORBS work has stalled (my billing database project) due to the B movie I find myself trapped in but I am slowly getting back up and have started work on the syncing engine for FileMaker Pro 7 to HanDBase. That should be fun. Oh, and as involves my gravity challenged, psychotic, satanic, and downright confusing girlfriend, we are to get married in 3 days. 

Go figure. Odd problems demand, well … sex.

Update 6/15/04

 

Ok, real updates coming soon. The delays were caused by various niggling technical snafus, the biggest being my girlfriends previously secret multiple personality disorder with the other personality being Satan. Who new? And what are the odds… 50/50 at most. Now the real question, was it Sweety or Satan that gave the iBook cement poisoning…the investigation continues.

Update 5/17/04

 

Long gap in updates. This mostly due to some life commotion and work ramp up. The project is going well and although early its in partial deployment. The biggest holdups are problems with HanDBase’s decision to close their database structure. That means me cracking it, which is a pain. As for ON TOPIC matters, I decided that the 8500 now sitting at work and wearing “culled from dumpster (not by me!!)” clothes was getting her spirits down resulting in ungodly network issues. In a fit of apologies I spiffed here up in a new case. Details are (coming soon) here in Just In Case.

Update 4/23/04

 

Yep.  Now this week really, really did SUCK!!!!

 

In an act or realism (and lets be realistic, self defense) I moved the entire 8500 rig up to my office.  I needed something bullet proof and which my pet project pretty much is and my office computing needs were not being met by the Power Center or by that XP abomination (even when forgiving it for its lack of RAM).  The XP Machine couldn’t see a standard Xerox Postscript IP printer on simple Ethernet network.  Also the network itself was going weird, bad enough to prompt me to take my router from home to the office

Update 4/13/04

Odd week. Odd choices. Looks like the PRIVATE LAN will be one computer lighter. Farwell. Good luck… I decided to go ahead and post this web monstrosity and literary tragedy online. By that I mean I used one of the free DDNS servers to assign it a permanent (we hope) IP address. slicedapple.ath.cx I hope something interesting happens that doesn’t involve a ten year old hacking my system. Odd week. Odd choices.

Update 4/10/04

 Decided to finish out this round of upgrades. I am pretty focused on my work project and need the computers stable. I finished up the drive rearrange and some final wiring. Facing realistic limits I now have these three internal HD’s, my 36 GB SCSI and the two large ATA drives, the 160 and the 200 GB. Only having controllers for four ATA drives I kept internal the new DVD burner and the 52x CDRW leaving the CDRW/DVD still in its firewire case. The old SCSI CD-ROM is also internal. Finally I still have the USB 2.0 multi-card reader, and the floppy (non-working when in OS X) installed. I reconnected the 36 GB drive light after having it disconnect due to moving it from the front of the case, to the back. I also finally wired up the remaining switch on the front this case as a master power switch (interrupts the green – well, purple for a Dell PS - lead off the PS). Lastly I cleaned up a little by moving some of the spaghetti and extraneous hardware inside the ATX case including both USB hubs. Looks better. 

It’s all working so far.

 
I also decided the old Clone is just too light for my work needs 

Update 4/7/04

 

Bad week. Bad day. Got a DVD Burner as gift (of sorts). It’s a Teak 4x4x4x12 DVDr +/- internal. I have not tested it but did manage to install it and it seemed to read at least. Correctly installing this will require rearranging all the drive hardware, and some other hardware as well. Looks like I loose a drive since I am using all four ATA connectors and the DVDr is ATA.

Update 3/23/04

 

Despite being busy at work, I have had a little time to do damage (and I mean damage!). Details to come later, but in brief. 

• Ram upgraded to a max 1 G via 8 matched 128 DIMMS now with interleaving active (for around a 15% increase in memory bandwidth)Ethernet reverted back to on-board via AAUI port (for 10 Mbps, apparently only the RJ-45 port was bad, not the on-board Enet controller) in order to shift bandwidth use away from the PCI cardsUSB 2.0 now working5 Port USB 2.0 card added (replacing 10/100 Enet) for total of 7 USB 2.0 portsOn-board video now working fully in Panther (my system now capable of 3 monitors at present)On-board sound not working (long story) – improved sound now provided via USB sound system (iMic) and Harmon Kardon Speakers/Subwoofer – all sound controls including master volume now workTwo ATA 133 drives replacing the 250 G ATA 100 drive (killed in the line of duty by a faulty IDE cable). The new drives are 200 G and 160 G. ATAPI 48x24x48x16 CDRW/DVD moved to external FW case (so its DVD reading capability can be used easily on other computers if necessary) but still connected/used as primary optical drive.Internal (out of FW case) 52x26x52 Lite-On CDRW added (Apple Supported)Internal Multi-card reader added via int USB 2.0 (Secure Digital, Memory Stick, CF, ect…)SCSI Umax Scanner and 1 serial modem removed – we don’t need no stinkin’ …Configured to serve as Bluetooth access point (as PPP server). This allows my Palm pilot (and any other device, including my laptop) to connect to the internet via BluetoothMoved to a full size ATX Tower case. This was a major project and involved customizing the case to mount the motherboard, custom drive/device mounting hardware, a rewired Dell power supply (similar to an ATX PS except they decided to randomly give the wires different colors) to work with an old world Mac including a hand built power signal inverter to allow for motherboard control (soft power) of the power supply (this is due to the fact that a standard/Dell PS is activated by having one of its leads grounded by the motherboard – goes low, however Macs activated their PS’s by sending out a 5v signal – goes high)Long overdue addition of surge suppression via uninterruptible power supply (with USB control for shutdown/file saving, ect…)Re-arranging of all hardware to tune for use/bandwidth issues to improve – sound, input device response, interface response, drive utilitization
• Most importantly, added pulsing blue rotary knob to control volume!!!

I am currently busy with a work project that involves creating a custom database on my Palm Pilot for service tracking/billing purposes for my business. I did not like any of the canned solutions and realized I could create my own pretty fast. Obviously this is not too much of a challenge as is it just basic data base design using forms, layouts, ect… but I have some loftier goals in mind. This project (along with others business related) is taking much of my time. My business computing needs are being served by:

• Spare PC desktop running Windows XP (for accessing a web based scheduling/tracking system)My Powerbook G4 12 inch as the primary computer and a target for Palm syncing.
• A mod upgraded Mac clone running a 300 Mhz G3 with 256 MB’s of RAM.